In a spot where there’s hardly enough bare ground for a blanket, we spread my unzipped sleeping bag, nod hello to the folks around us, and settle down. Space is tight. Edges of sleeping bags and blankets touch, but each blanket or sleeping bag is its own island. Those on the move respect one another’s space, trying their best to walk along the edges and bits of grass between blankets. There’s an endless chant of excuse mes from the barefoot wayfarers who pass.

The rain has stopped. Before the music begins, an emcee delivers announcements through public address speakers on the scaffolding: “There are a lot of things going on with all these elements conspiring, like the sticky mud wiggling between our toes and the drippy rain rolling down our necks, but it’s all part of the high.”

And: “This is the first free city of the Aquarian age.”

And: “Richard Norris, please go to the pink-and-white medical tent immediately.”

When the emcee tells us that there are half a million people here, I can’t help thinking that, short of some miraculous coincidence, the chances of finding Barry are nil. He told me he’d be flying a kite, but even if there were a breeze, there’s no space for him to launch one. Then the emcee warns us that the brown tabs of acid circulating through the crowd are bad. Tinsley and I share another look. In our experience, public address systems have been the voice of authority used in school for morning announcements, to say the Pledge of Allegiance, or to call kids down to the office. Now the voice of authority is advising that if we are determined to try the brown acid, we should use caution and start with half a tab.

Despite the damp and muddy conditions, people are in good spirits, talking, laughing, sharing smokes. There’s a sense of camaraderie amid the awe-inspiring realization that there are so many of us. We may all be strangers, but we have much in common. Our hair, our clothes, our drugs, our music. Our general sense of alienation. Our mistrust of the government. Our opposition to the war.

Tinsley shoots pictures of the shaggy-haired guy on a blanket next to us wearing a blue-and-red-striped necktie as a headband. Many of our fathers wear similar ties, but around his head like that, it’s a symbol of rebellion and rejection of uptight middle-class existence. The guy hands us the joint he’s been smoking and says to pass it along. We grab handfuls of Cocoa Puffs from a meandering box and wash them down with water from a glass jug that soon follows. Despite the ache I feel for Robin, I know that she would never have felt comfortable here.